Affiliation:
1. Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University and Research, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands
Abstract
This paper examines how utopian river planning has arisen in Colombia and Spain since the late nineteenth century. Specifically, the paper contributes to understanding how particular ideologies of modernism and development present in territorial planning connect both countries. Taking Thomas More’s classic work ‘Utopia’ as the analytical reference, I analyze how utopian tendencies have traveled through time and space to shape territorial planning and water governance. In both countries, this was evident in the late nineteenth century through the political project to strengthen the nation state. For Spain, I describe the regenerationist movement and the hydraulic utopia led by the Spanish intellectual Joaquín Costa, who forged the dream of a water nationhood. By contrast, in Colombia, several political intellectuals looked at Europe and North America as a source of inspiration to achieve progress by controlling rivers. Through the method of disjunctive comparison, I show how the same utopian notions are expressed in similar ways in distinct contexts: violently governing the flows of rivers, standardizing minds and ordering territories towards capital growth. This paper contributes to grasping the notions and roots of the discourses that have colonized the political water agendas in both countries.
Funder
ERC European Research Council under the EU’s Horizon 2020 program
INREF-WUR funded transdisciplinary research and education program
Subject
Water Science and Technology,Aquatic Science,Geography, Planning and Development,Biochemistry
Reference77 articles.
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5. Tomo, I. (1970). Las Ideas Liberales en Colombia: 1849–1914, Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
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